The wreckage of the Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 lies on the ground near Aktau airport, Kazakhstan, on Wednesday.

Azamat Sarsenbayev/AP

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Azamat Sarsenbayev/AP

An Azerbaijani airliner with 67 people on board crashed in the Kazakh city of Aktau on Wednesday, leaving at least 32 survivors, according to officials. More than 30 people are probably dead.

Kazakhstan’s Emergencies Ministry said in a Telegram statement that there were five crew members on board. At least 29 were hospitalized, the ministry told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

Russian news agency Interfax quoted medical personnel as saying four bodies had been recovered and rescue workers at the scene as saying both pilots had died in the crash, according to a preliminary assessment.

The Embraer 190 plane made an emergency landing 3 km from the city, Azerbaijan Airlines said earlier.

The Kazakh Ministry of Emergency Situations initially said that 25 people had survived the crash. The number was later revised to 27, 28 and then 29 as the search and rescue operation continued at the crash site, lowering the alleged death toll.

The Prosecutor General’s Office in Azerbaijan later reported that at least 32 people survived the crash, adding that the number was not yet final.

The number of survivors could mean over 30 people are dead.

In this photo taken from a video released by the Mangystau region administration, the wreckage of the Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 lies on the ground near the airport in Aktau, Kazakhstan, on Wednesday.

AP/Mangystau Region Administration

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AP/Mangystau Region Administration

The plane was originally scheduled to fly from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus. According to Azerbaijan Airlines, 37 passengers were Azerbaijani citizens. There were also 16 Russian citizens, six Kazakh and three Kyrgyz citizens, it said.

RIA Novosti quoted Russia’s civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia as saying preliminary information showed the pilot decided to divert to Aktau after a bird strike on the plane led to “an emergency situation on board.”

Cell phone footage shared online appeared to show the plane making a steep descent before hitting the ground in a fireball. Other footage showed part of the fuselage being torn away from the wings and the rest of the plane lying upside down in the grass. The footage matched the aircraft’s colors and its registration number.

Some of the videos posted on social media showed survivors dragging fellow passengers away from the wreckage of the plane.

Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed that as the plane approached the airport in Aktau, it appeared to make a right turn and its altitude fluctuated significantly up and down in the final minutes of the flight before hitting the ground.

FlightRadar24 separately said in an online post that the plane had experienced “severe GPS interference” that “caused the aircraft to transmit poor ADS-B data,” referring to the information it was flight tracking -Websites allow you to track aircraft in flight. Russia has been accused in the past of jamming GPS transmissions across the region.

Embraer did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Wednesday morning. Azerbaijan Airlines said in a statement that it would keep the public informed and changed its social media banners to solid black.

Azerbaijan’s state news agency Azertac said an official delegation consisting of Azerbaijan’s Minister of Emergency Situations, the country’s deputy prosecutor general and the vice president of Azerbaijan Airlines had been sent to Aktau to conduct an “on-site investigation.”

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who had traveled to St. Petersburg, returned to Azerbaijan when he learned of the crash, the presidential press service said. Aliyev was scheduled to attend an informal meeting of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a bloc of former Soviet states formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Aliyev expressed his condolences to the victims’ families in a statement on social media. “It is with deep sadness that I express my condolences to the families of the victims and wish those injured a speedy recovery,” he wrote.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Aliyev by phone and expressed his condolences, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Both Kazakh and Azerbaijani authorities were investigating the crash. Embraer told The Associated Press in a statement that the company “stands ready to assist all relevant authorities.”